A couple of days ago I wanted to restart the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service on one of our SharePoint servers because some timer jobs seemed to be stuck. When I tried this though, the state of the service became "stopping" and it stayed that way for hours. I tried stopping it with NET STOP, but this gave me an error that the service "could not be controlled in its current state". I read online that rebooting didn't help with most people and this also wasn't an option since this was a live server, but then I read about PsTools. This set of command line tools contains a little something called PsKill. This little tool kills the process for you, allowing you to start it again. In my case, I used it the following way:
PsKill.exe \\moss-server owstimer
This killed it immediately and I was able to start the service again.
You do have to be careful with this though, since not all services can be killed without any risk (for example when a process is writing things to a database).
One last thing, for your convenience: the link to PsTools: http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/PsTools.zip.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
OWSTIMER error when restoring a SharePoint site
When I was trying to restore a web application with a single site in it and one content database, I received the following two errors:
Error: Object OldIntranet (89) (previous name: Intranet (80)) failed in event OnRestore. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory.
SPUpdatedConcurrencyException: An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action. The object SPWebApplication Name=OldIntranet (89) Parent=SPWebService is being updated by svc_moss_sql, in the OWSTIMER process, on machine MP-MOSS-INDEX01. View the tracing log for more information about the conflict.
Error: Object SharePoint _OldIntranet89_Content (previous name: SharePoint _Intranet_Content) failed in event OnPostRestore. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory.
SPException: Cannot attach database to Web application. Use the command line tool or Central Administration pages to attach the database manually to the proper Web Application.
I tried every possible solution I found on the internet, but nothing worked. Then I decided to try the update with stsadm through the following command:
stsadm -o restore -directory "\\fileshare\backupfolder" -restoremethod new -item
"Farm\Windows SharePoint Services Web Application\Intranet (80)"
After doing this, I first got a new, different error about the Administration Service. I restarted this service and after that, the stsadm command also gave me the two previous errors. So then I decided to just turn off the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service... and what do you know, it worked! Afterwards, I also noticed that I had turned off the WSS Administration service, so if turning off the Timer service doesn't work, you can also try this one.
I do know that turning off the Timer service in a live environment probably is not such a good idea, but well, if nothing else works, you might be forced to do so...
I also didn't test doing the restore through Central Administration (since it had already been succesfully restored through stsadm), but feel free to give it a shot and let me know if it also works! (Although I doubt it, since I think the procedure through the Central Admin uses a timer job for this, which won't work if the Timer services has been stopped.)
Error: Object OldIntranet (89) (previous name: Intranet (80)) failed in event OnRestore. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory.
SPUpdatedConcurrencyException: An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action. The object SPWebApplication Name=OldIntranet (89) Parent=SPWebService is being updated by svc_moss_sql, in the OWSTIMER process, on machine MP-MOSS-INDEX01. View the tracing log for more information about the conflict.
Error: Object SharePoint _OldIntranet89_Content (previous name: SharePoint _Intranet_Content) failed in event OnPostRestore. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory.
SPException: Cannot attach database to Web application. Use the command line tool or Central Administration pages to attach the database manually to the proper Web Application.
I tried every possible solution I found on the internet, but nothing worked. Then I decided to try the update with stsadm through the following command:
stsadm -o restore -directory "\\fileshare\backupfolder" -restoremethod new -item
"Farm\Windows SharePoint Services Web Application\Intranet (80)"
After doing this, I first got a new, different error about the Administration Service. I restarted this service and after that, the stsadm command also gave me the two previous errors. So then I decided to just turn off the Windows SharePoint Services Timer service... and what do you know, it worked! Afterwards, I also noticed that I had turned off the WSS Administration service, so if turning off the Timer service doesn't work, you can also try this one.
I do know that turning off the Timer service in a live environment probably is not such a good idea, but well, if nothing else works, you might be forced to do so...
I also didn't test doing the restore through Central Administration (since it had already been succesfully restored through stsadm), but feel free to give it a shot and let me know if it also works! (Although I doubt it, since I think the procedure through the Central Admin uses a timer job for this, which won't work if the Timer services has been stopped.)
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